Blaine interim superintendent Dan Chaplik has come into the new school year with a list of goals he wants to accomplish during his one-year term, including making sure student voices are part of the conversation.
Chaplik, who started his career as a Blaine teacher and most recently worked as superintendent of Sultan school district, sat down with The Northern Light to discuss what he envisioned for the new year and what he wanted Blaine families to know about their local education.
This article has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Having an opportunity to come back to the school district where I started 32 years ago is a blessing. It’s a full circle situation where I get to return to a school district and community that made a big impression on me. Since I was here, I’ve worked in five school districts and been a superintendent for the last 20 years.
I had positive memories of being here and it being a community that was supportive of students and a culture centered around student learning.
Connect the school district to our students and community, and develop a sense of belonging for all of our students so that they feel connected to the schools and our staff. I want our group of educators to create great experiences and growth opportunities for students. I want to get involved in various aspects of the community to understand what has and hasn’t worked.
Open doors that may have felt closed before. A simple thing we did is open the front door of the district office. You don’t have to key card your way in. I want a sense of openness and connection to the schools, and I want every student to know that in the Blaine school district, every student matters.
District office staff is going to spend time with the principals to make sure everyone knows the school district’s goals, and I’m taking district staff who don’t normally work directly with students into classrooms. I’m looking at creating task forces around important issues in the community. I’d like to focus on the budget, financial planning, transparency, creating quality education programs and increasing our career and technical education (CTE) offerings. There’s a lot to tap into in this community to make sure students are learning about the trades and have opportunities to seek routes other than just college.
We could look at our educational offerings. As I mentioned, one of my goals is to increase our CTE offerings. When we talk about quality, we want to make sure we’re offering quality in different areas, so we not only have rigorous courses in advanced coursework, but we also have rigorous courses in technical education.
I want to make sure students feel connected to our schools and community. If we run into issues where students aren’t feeling that connection, we need to make sure we’re listening to student voices regarding their experiences in our schools.
Not necessarily, but I think we’ve often done a lot of planning without always considering student voices.
Having a superintendent advisory committee is something I’ve done to meet with a group of students, elementary through high school. You engage with them about their experience in school.
You’ve probably heard a lot about funding. You’ve also probably heard about the community not being connected to the school district. It is a combination of understanding exactly what needs to happen to improve the relationship of the school district with families, working together, opening doors and problem solving so we’re all part of the solution.
Recognize people. Put your best foot forward every single day to help employees feel like they’re valued.
When you go through fairly large reductions a few years in a row, it really causes some challenges. We’ve added some staff back, but we want to assess places that we have deeply reduced to make sure we put together a staffing model that has course offerings that kids need, is able to support the work that happens in the schools on a daily basis and recognizes people for their good work.
It’s a series of how you treat people, how they perceive you care about them and how they see you moving your organization forward.
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